


Question and Answer

by spacemutineer



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Diogenes Club, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, Memory, Not Canon Compliant, PTSD, Post-The Reichenbach Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/pseuds/spacemutineer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just after Sherlock fakes his death, John goes to Mycroft (who doesn't yet know the truth in this telling) with a question he cannot get out of his mind: why did Sherlock lie to him about not being a genius? John has his question, Mycroft has answers neither of them want to hear aloud, and two stoic men tangle with the devastation of grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Question and Answer

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before The Empty Hearse and therefore is not canon compliant. The story has been languishing in my unfinished pile since then because of that, but I decided I'd go ahead now and fix it up to post anyway. It wasn't doing anyone any good just sitting in a folder.

John arrived, determined. He would have this answer, come hell or high water, and Mycroft was going to give it to him. 

The white-gloved men who made up the Diogenes' security force came after him the instant he stepped inside, of course. Palms up and fingers pointing, they made their demands for him to stop and leave in silence. 

John promptly blew straight past the mimes and walked directly to his destination. One of the guards squeezed his willow-thin arm in front of the door at the last second. He whispered his sthreats with his head bowed low to keep his voice even further down. There was little point in keeping quiet – every bald or snow-white head had already popped up from each armchair like a field of gophers, all alert to the threat in their midst.

"Sir, this is highly irregular. You cannot disturb our members this way. You must leave. You will leave."

"I'm not going anywhere." John raised his voice at the door. "Mycroft, let me in! I know you're in there! Open the door, or God help me, I start singing. Which will it be? The door or The Doors? It's your choice."

A moment passed and just as John was about to start into a howling rendition of _L.A. Woman_ for his captive audience, the door opened abruptly. "Giles, thank you, I'll handle this. No, thank you, that won't be necessary." Mycroft looked as spit-polished as he always did. Only the barest hints of sleepless shadow under his eyes gave away the secret that anything at all was wrong. 

"John. Come in." Mycroft shut the door instantly behind them. "You know you could have called and simply scheduled a meeting. I would have been happy to speak with you whenever you wished."

"Are you sure about that?" John paced in front of the bookcases and all the fancy unread books with their ridiculous gilt pages. "I don't think you're happy to see me at all. I'm not exactly pleased to see you, either."

"What do you want, John?"

"I thought of something last night. Something didn't make sense to me, hasn't made sense to me, and I finally figured out what it is. It's a question, and I need help with the answer. I need a detective, but you're as close as I can come to that now."

Mycroft poured himself two fingers of auburn scotch from a crystal decanter. "Only one thing in this disaster doesn't make sense to you? How fortunate for you."

John glared at him. "Shut up and listen. I need to know something and you're going to tell me. You understand that? I need to know why. Why did he do it?"

"John, you have to stop this. There is nothing to be gained in agonizing over questions no one can answer."

"No! Dammit, no, that's not– I'm not talking about that! I'm asking you why he lied to me. The last thing he did was lie to me, Mycroft. He stood there on that fucking ledge and told me he was a fake. Said everything they said about him was true, that he was a fraud and a liar. Now I know he wasn't a liar. Sherlock was many things, but he was not a liar. _I know that._ So why? Why did he lie to me then? Sherlock did everything for a reason. Everything had a reason, an explanation, _thought_. So what was it? What was he thinking when he lied to me about something he and I both knew was true? Why would he even try that?"

"Perhaps he was attempting in some way to spare your feelings. In any case, you should not sell him so short, John. Sherlock was in fact a consummate liar. He said whatever needed to be said at any given moment to achieve his ends, and he excelled at it." 

John clenched his fists and raised his voice again, barely keeping himself in check. "You shut your mouth! Just shut up! After all that's happened, after everything you've done, how dare you talk about him like that? He was your _brother_."

Instead of flinching from John's anger, Mycroft sipped at his scotch. He held himself as still as a marble statue, gazing placidly at the pacing man before him. "Yes. Yes, he was. He was my brother and I know what he was like. He lied when he thought it would get him what he wanted." He tilted the carved crystal glass back and forth to watch the whiskey splash against the sides. "He was like that his whole life."

"Then what did he want, Mycroft? You tell me that, then! What did he want when he lied to my face?"

"He wanted to _die_ , John. That is what he intended to accomplish and as ever, my brother did as he wished, the consequences of his actions be damned."

That was the last of what John's control could bear. He lunged at Mycroft, shoving him hard into the wall by his collar. The expensive books on the shelves rattled in place. Mycroft's glass of scotch fell out of his hand and shattered wet across the floor. The man himself did not bother trying to defend himself as John shouted in his face.

"You son of a bitch! This is your fault! You sold your own brother's life! You gave that psychopath a way in and now Sherlock is dead!"

Mycroft's Adam's apple bobbed between John's fists. "Do you think I am not well aware of that fact? It is one of the dwindling few things about him that I know any longer with certainty. Perhaps the only thing." For the first time John knew, the meticulously cultivated layer of cold detachment dropped away in Mycroft's voice. There was real hurt there instead. Pain and feeling, from a Holmes. 

The security guards rushed in, drawn by the commotion but John had already let go by then. Mycroft shooed his men away with a flick of his wrist and he and John retreated wordlessly to their respective chairs across the barren expanse of Mycroft's oak desk.

Silence hung in the room, a physical presence, or perhaps its absence. John stared at his hands in his lap. His fingers ached from the clenching grip he'd had on Mycroft's lapels. 

"God, I've been so angry at you. I wanted to punch you, to throttle you. I wanted to hurt you." John looked up. Mycroft's clothes were askew. His hair stuck up in pieces. He looked mussed and unkempt. Actually fragile. Human. "Guess I didn't need to. You were already doing it for me."

Mycroft blinked but said nothing, and retrieved two more glasses from the silver tray with unsteady hands instead. He filled them both and stepped around his desk and the glass shards on the floor to hand one to John. A minute or two passed while they drank without speaking, John in the uncomfortable leather visitor's chair, and Mycroft leaned against the desk. 

"Sherlock never drank the Scotch I offered him," Mycroft eventually said. "He called it an intentionally archaic status affectation." He sighed as he took another sip. "He never did believe me that I drank it for the taste."

"The taste and not the alcohol?"

"A side benefit only, as I explained to him when he asked the same thing."

"Of course you did. Of course he did." John had so many thoughts but no words to express them in, not then, anyway. Finally he managed to get something together. 

"You're wrong, you know. About your brother. You know a lot about him."

"Do I? I didn't know enough, obviously."

"Mycroft. Did he... did he try anything like this before, when he was younger?"

" _'Like this.'_ Quite the euphemism." Mycroft stiffened, clearly remembering something he wished he could forget. He hesitated, pursing his lips, deciding whether to articulate the thoughts that were clearly piling up in his mind like bitter drifting snow. "To answer your question, not overtly, no. But Sherlock always liked to skirt the lines, to press his boundaries." 

"Press his boundaries?"

After another deliberate breath and a considerable, albeit characteristically swift process of thought, Mycroft explained the statement to what remained of his scotch. "He overdosed twice. The first time I dismissed as merely an accident. He was really still just a child then, as reckless and ignorant of consequences as all children are. But the second time, I knew. My brother did not make the same mistake twice. 

"Afterwards, he was wholly unapologetic about it. Beyond an appeasing empty promise to our mother that it would not happen again, he refused to discuss the incident at all. Over time, I came to believe he intended it as an experiment with himself, akin to taking a sports car onto the Autobahn to see how fast it will go when you push the pedal to the floor. I am sure he _flew_. But Sherlock was testing the limits of his heart more than he was testing the limits of his brain, and he knew it. He simply didn't care."

Despite his best efforts, John's mind couldn't help but conjure for him a perfect image of Sherlock there and then, a detailed moving picture show of the past, of how it must have gone, of him, nearly but not quite dying in the A&E. He probably would have been dragged in by the shoulders, his limp body dropped unceremoniously at the door by other junkies who cared less about his safety and more about not getting themselves caught. The attendants would haul Sherlock, all bones and youth, up onto the table for assessment. His open mouth gets quickly covered by a bag valve mask but that does not hide the empty, bloodshot eyes that sit rolled back into his head. As soon as they cut his shirt open and attach the leads, the alarms sound out, clear and loud. John scrambles to him, shouts instructions, and laces his fingers to start the compressions. Around him, machines wail and people run. Sherlock's flushed, fevered body radiates heat. The heat surrounds them both, oppressive, suffocating, everywhere. Through it all, John keeps working, keeps pushing his weight into Sherlock's pale chest over and over, again and again, even as the others around are shouting, shouting over the gunfire and the dust storm, shouting about more. More are incoming– 

"John. _John._ "

John snapped back to reality with a jolt at the sound of his name. When he brought his eyes up again, Mycroft was looking at him, frowning. Looking may have been too soft a description. Boring into him was closer. 

"Oh. I– Sorry." He swallowed to try and quench his bone dry throat. "I don't know where I was there for a second."

"I do." His face grey and grim, Mycroft considered John, and considered his response. "One person already has died for the mistake that I made," he said at last. "Do not require me to bear the weight of another. The train of thought you are on leads only to dark places, John. Don't let it take you there."

He knew. Of course he knew.

"I'm... I'm working on it. Got an appointment with my therapist tomorrow."

"Good." Mycroft nodded, perhaps as much to reassure himself as to approve of John's pronouncement. "That's good. Be sure you keep it." 

"Don't worry, I don't need surveillance."

"John, you're in London. There will be surveillance whether you need it or not."


End file.
